In the seventeenth century, surgery broke away from general medicine and emerged as a scientific discipline in its own right. It began to be taught in medical schools, with the help of teaching aids such as wax models and anatomical tables, and in conformity with specific methods and procedures.

The French Royal Academy of Surgery was founded in 1731; the Josephine Academy of Vienna, in 1785. Surgery became an art, and instruction in professional surgery focused on operating procedures that were continuously improving thanks to advances in scientific knowledge. Operations concerning lithotomy, retroversion of the uterus, Caesarean section, cataract, strangulated hernia, polyps, and aneurisms were steadily perfected in the light of anatomical and physiological discoveries, but also as a result of surgeons' ever greater manual skills.

Some branches of surgery, such as obstetrics, orthopedics, urology, and dentistry began to establish themselves as separate disciplines.

However, tooth-pullers, barbers, and bonesetters—a far cry from the new figure of the professional surgeon—continued, for a long time, to provide their services to the poor. "Licensed" surgeons—in other words, those who had obtained a university degree—practiced only in the major hospitals and teaching institutions.